TEN BIGGEST MISTAKES I SEE MY CLIENTS MAKING* 01. NOT UNDERSTANDING THE BALANCE OF THE LONG AND THE SHORT.

The timing of the first part of this ten-part series is not a coincidence. Q4 is here, and many of us in the midst of strategy planning for FY 2025: the artful dance between Marketing, Sales, Ops, Finance, CEO, and Board, orchestrated within the limitations of budget and time.

I get it. Everyone is busy. Campaigns are still running. Festive season sales are about to start. Appraisals. Raises. Board report. Office party. Can’t you just say “20% growth, please” and increase promotional spend accordingly across channels?

Em…. No.

Every good great marketing plan should include strategy and tactics, grounded by research. I’ll touch on research and diagnosis later, but for now, let’s focus on the fusion of brand and marketing strategy.

Did I say fusion of brand and marketing strategy? I sure did. Because you simply cannot deliver a solid marketing strategy without a solid brand strategy. (Equally, you shouldn’t really create a brand strategy without considering the subsequent marketing strategy – again, more on this later).

Anyway, TL:DR – Your marketing strategy and thus, plan should focus on brand equity, including emotional brand building and short-term sales. Fancy diagram below:

Don’t believe me? Read this.

Binet and Field’s, The Long and the Short of It, suggest that optimum balance between brand building and sales activation is around 60:40. Brands should spend around 60% of their budget on brand-building activity and 40% on sales activation.

Brand building leads to stronger brand equity: the value premium generated through brand awareness, associations, loyalty, and perceived quality. Strong brand equity is a massive competitor advantage.

Sales activation generates sales by influencing customers in the decision-making stage. Think: driving revenue through various marketing channels and influencing the 4 Ps: product, pricing, promotion and place.

Three common mistakes I see my clients making:

1.     All tactics, no strategy:

Marketing strategy sorted and tactics and budget done in half a day? Non-existent strategic targets, goals and timelines? No time for collaboration with brand, sales or dev? A good marketing strategy takes time. It needs research. It needs targets, goals, and a timeline. It needs to understand details on who is buying your stuff. It needs input from heads outside the marketing team. And only then can it consider tactics - call me old school, but to me, these would include: product, pricing, promotion and place. Take the time to look back, collaborate, and look forward. Otherwise, you risk looking at just a big pile of (potentially expensive or time-wasting) tactics.

2.     Your marketing lead is there for a short time not a long time:

A fresh pair of eyes can be tremendously helpful. Increased acquisition, improved conversion rates, and higher revenue can sound awesome. But changes for short-term results can be detrimental to years of built-up brand equity. Make sure your marketing lead isn’t too quick to start on the ‘low-hanging fruit’ bandwagon; especially playing with pricing and promotion without understanding long-term impact on brand equity. Things will look short-term sexy, and end in a messy divorce without a pre-nup.

3.     The blindfolded quest for “ROI”:

Yes, it can be easier to track short-term ROI, and thus easier to receive more marketing spend, and easier to celebrate the wins – especially in front of the Board. The irony is you need brand equity fro sales activation to exploit. Part of any good marketer’s job is to argue for long-term brand building, and fight for the right to do so. This means you need to be trusted. Oh yeah, and it’s really hard.

Hope you found this helpful. I’d love to hear your thoughts: nada@bynada.co.uk

*A ten-part, snappy 500 600-word series to help identify the ten biggest mistakes I see MDs, Founders, and CEOs of SMEs making when it comes to strategic brand and marketing.